


Houdini

by APortableBanquet (peregrinefalcon)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BAMF Mary, Faked Suicide, Fluff, Jim and Sherlock run away, John is oblivious, Laura's theory, M/M, Mary and Sherlock are best friends, Moriarty is Alive, Mycroft Being Mycroft, Possessive Moriarty, Post-Reichenbach, Secret Relationship, Sherlock Is A Bit Not Good, Sherlock Series 3 Spoilers, Vacation, did you miss me?, just wanna have some fun
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 02:58:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6498118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peregrinefalcon/pseuds/APortableBanquet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock gives Jim a reason to live. Jim gives Sherlock a reason to run.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Houdini

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to @corvusTempus for beta-ing!

Death is nothing at all.  
I have only slipped away to the next room.  
I am I and you are you.  
Whatever we were to each other,  
That, we still are.

Call me by my old familiar name.  
Speak to me in the easy way  
which you always used.  
Put no difference into your tone.  
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed  
at the little jokes we enjoyed together.  
Play, smile, think of me. Pray for me.  
Let my name be the household word  
that it always was.  
Let it be spoken without effect.  
Without the trace of a shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant.  
It is the same that it ever was.  
There is absolute unbroken continuity.  
Why should I be out of mind  
because I am out of sight?

I am but waiting for you.  
For an interval.  
Somewhere. Very near.  
Just around the corner.

All is well.

 

Henry Scott Holland, “Death Is Nothing At All”

 

\----

 

“I don’t have to die,” Sherlock practically sang, “ _If I’ve got you_.”

 

Jim’s face shattered into a relieved, almost lightheaded grin. “Oh,” he was practically breathless. He teased, “You think you can _make_ me stop the order? You think _you_ can make me do that?”

 

Sherlock circled him, some large, looming feline beast of prey. “Yes,” he was very pleased with himself. “ _So do you_.”

 

“Sherlock,” the unsaid “ _honey_ ” dripped heavily from Jim’s tongue. “Your big brother and all the King’s horses couldn’t make me do a thing I didn’t want to.”

 

His steps slowed as he edged closer to Jim, blotting out the sun. Jim’s eyes were pure black in the shadow. “Yes, but I’m not my brother, remember? I am _you_ \- prepared to do _anything_ ;” Sherlock let the words sink into the air. “Prepared to _burn_ ;” He felt something coil up within his chest; some _delight_. “Prepared to do what _ordinary people_ won’t do.” The last couple of sentences slithered out from between his teeth. “You want me to shake hands with you in Hell? _I shall not disappoint you._ ”

 

Jim stared wide-eyed at Sherlock, and then averted his gaze. _Too good to be true_. “Nah, you talk big. _Nah_. You’re ordinary,” he convicted Sherlock, “You’re _ordinary_ -” He looked up again at Sherlock, at the sunlight gilding the curves and tips of his dark brown curls; at that soft, thorny halo. “ _You’re on the side of the angels_.”

 

Sherlock let his voice drop. Fall. “Oh, I may be on the side of the angels, but I don’t think for one _second_ that I am one of _them_.”

 

There were no shadows swirling within the depths of Jim’s dark eyes, nor was there any mischievous glint, for Sherlock had extinguished the sun. Nothing like the books had written about. The two of them, nemeses - for the lack of a better word - suspended over the world, in some Ragnarök-ian showdown but missing all the hallmarks of legend. There was no lightning sparking between their eyes like some cartoon. Nothing crackled around them; the air was still. Jim’s eyes were only unreflective pools of pitch black.

 

Sherlock’s eyes lost the gleam of silvered glass, their highly reflexive blue dulling to a darker grey. Unassailable. Jim tried diving into them like he had so many times - finding out where all the buttons were, figuring out how to command this automaton of a man. Now he just felt like hitting concrete. Oh, but the pain was _delicious_. He’d never quite felt anything like it. He’d never quite felt _anything_.

 

If they hadn’t known better, it would have felt _ordinary_. The word tasted dirty to both of them. In some clichéd way, their brains whirred around one another, trying to take each other down, take each other apart, in vain. Jim recalled Dalí’s painting, the _Autumnal Cannibalism_. Sherlock thought on Caravaggio’s _Narcissus_. There was this unhealthy balance between mutual destruction and mutual obsession. It was elastic and fragile like water tension. So easily broken by a pebble in the puddle; but the picture always came together again. No, it wasn’t ordinary. It was simply a force of nature.

 

There was no need to disassemble one another. Just look inside. You’re the same.

 

The black holes in Jim’s eyes seem to hunger for that solid cement in Sherlock’s. For all his emptiness, he saw his own shadow in Sherlock’s eyes. The devil within the angel.

 

“No, you’re not.” _You’re not one of them_.

 

He blinked for the first time in ages. Or what felt like ages. He could have simply blinked before but had forgotten, _lost in Sherlock’s eyes_ , he laughs to himself. He almost laughs aloud. No, he was never lost. He knew exactly where he was. He just never expected to be found.

 

Sherlock blinks too, brain subconsciously mirroring Jim’s. Simple neurobiology. But today it felt special. Something other than mirror neurons. Jim smiles. His eyes are open.

 

“I see,” his voice is soft, but not like velvet. Like clean bedsheets. “You’re not ordinary,” he savours the thought. “No. You’re _me_.”

 

He laughs now. The air rings with it and Sherlock is caught between relief and madness. The sun burns on his back. Let it scorch his wings. He’ll gladly fall.

 

“You’re me!” Have you ever seen an overflowing cup? “Thank you!”

 

Epiphany fills him up, making him breathless and _enraptured_ and enlightened and almost _turned on_ , like fucking _ecstasy_. His arms hover around Sherlock, positing an embrace, but he decides against it. Too much of a good thing.

 

“Sherlock Holmes,” he manages. _My cup runneth over_.

 

Jim’s hand is soft and warm around Sherlock’s. He wasn’t expecting this. He expected ice, blood, gasoline. But Jim was so gentle; dangerously so. Anything human about James Moriarty felt more dangerous than anything monstrous about him. Jim affectionately squeezed Sherlock’s hand, and Sherlock felt himself toppling.

 

“Bless you, thank you.” Voice soft as whispers and breath. It all began to fit together properly. It all worked out in the end. Jim was terribly wrong, and he was never happier about it.

 

 _What now?_ hung in the air, clouding the moment around them. _Too much of a good thing_. The weight of his Beretta tugged tantalisingly at his pocket. Maybe this is as good as it gets …

 

“Don’t you dare,” Sherlock hissed. His grip on Jim’s hand tightened, and Jim felt himself go clammy. _So, he noticed_.

 

“Well what would you have me do?”

 

“I have a plan.”

 

A little tired of standing and drained of the intensity of the past few moments, Jim sat down on the roof. He leaned backwards, onto the palms of his hands, and stretched his legs. He felt the chalky dust of the hospital roof stick onto the heavy cashmere of his coat, but he had ceased caring about anything by the time he got here. Might as well continue. “I’m all ears, darling.”

 

Sherlock reached into his left coat pocket and took out a little squirt bottle that resembled a condiment bottle. “Is that -?” “Can you lie down?” “Yeah, sure, how dead do you want me to look?” “As dead as possible. But keep your eyes open.” The concrete was warm and hard against the back of his head. The sun was dazzlingly bright in his eyes.

 

Something brushed against his right arm. “Hey-” “Relax, I’m just repositioning your limbs.” Sherlock’s hands reached into his left coat pocket and found the gun. “This might get loud,” Sherlock apologised.

 

Still, Jim couldn’t help but jump a little when the shot ripped through the space around them. Sherlock placed the warm gun in Jim’s left hand and curled his fingers around it. Then he spritzed the blood from the bottle around Jim’s head. Judging by its colour, viscosity, and the way it annoyingly plastered onto the hair and scalp on the back of Jim’s head, it was real blood. Jim wondered briefly if it was Sherlock’s own.

 

“Molly will be here any moment.” Jim smiled a bit at the recollection of the nice girl that Sherlock had jilted for him. She was so nice that it was painfully boring and unexciting to be around her, but nevertheless he was curious how she’d act in the given circumstances. He let on a little smile in his open-mouthed, dead stare.

 

Sure enough, after a couple minutes the door to the ceiling busted open, and Molly came through, pushing a gurney with a body on it. Sherlock inspected it, pleased with how much it resembled him in his clothing, and particularly impressed with the uncanny resemblance rendered on its silicone mask.

 

“Is he … dead?” Molly asked, voice quavering, and pointing discreetly at Jim with her index finger. “As a doornail,” Sherlock confirmed, as he fastened bits of fishing line on the corpse to create a makeshift puppet mechanism. It had already been fitted with a wooden frame and weighted shoes to help it stand alone. It was heavy, and even Sherlock strained a little to prop it up on the edge of the hospital roof.

 

Jim was kind of disappointed to learn that Molly was not particularly gleeful or “You deserve it!” or righteous. Rather, she just looked at him pitifully, like anyone else would look at a corpse, a lone child, a dead tree. Goddamnit, why is she so nice? Jim hated it. He hated the pity, the sadness, the compassion.

 

“Thank you, Molly.” Sherlock signalled her exit. “No problem, Sherlock,” Molly quickly directed her attention from Jim to Sherlock, and flashed him a nervous smile. “I’m glad I could help.” Sherlock smiled warmly at her and Jim felt a stab of incomprehension cut through him. _Her? Nice, predictable, ordinary Molly?_ “Nonsense, I couldn’t have done this without you.”

 

The door clanged shut behind Molly as she wheeled the empty gurney away. Jim listened to her footfalls fade away like a handprint on memory foam. “Can I sit up now?” “You may.” He eased himself up on his forearms, and propped himself against a chimney. “You actually like her?” “What, are you jealous?” “Of course not.”

 

He felt Sherlock sit down next to him. Jim drew up his legs and rested his chin on his knees. He placed the gun on the concrete roof, and reached into his pocket for his phone. When he found it, he opened the messaging app and texted two words: _Down boy. -JM_

 

“I’ve called off the snipers,” he announced as he put his phone back into his pocket. “Thank you.” Sherlock had his phone out himself, and was dialing a number. “John?” Sherlock nodded. “Oh, he’s going to be _so_ angry if he finds out.” “He’s _always_ angry,” Sherlock smirked, “And he’ll never find out.” “Well aren’t _you_ feeling cocky today?” Sherlock only smiled as he fiddled with the fishing lines in his hand.

 

They heard a taxi pull up in front of the hospital. Jim could hear the dial tone end abruptly, like a chop, separating flesh from bone. Sherlock had put the phone on speaker mode, so he heard everything.

 

“Hello?” John’s voice was a little irritated, Jim noticed. The default tone John used with Sherlock. He’s observed it when he was listening to surveillance tapes from 221B.

 

“John,” Sherlock carefully and convincingly introduced worry into his tone. He tried to sound sorry, because he was at least a little bit sorry about leaving John, Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, and everyone who didn’t know the truth, alone.

 

“Hey, Sherlock, you okay?”

 

“Turn around and walk back the way you came now,” Sherlock ordered, sounding not very okay.

  
  
“No, I’m coming in,” John insisted, the worry and slight impatience inching into his voice.

 

“Just do as I ask,” Sherlock, almost frantic, practically begged. “Please.”

 

Sherlock reached into his pocket and took out another phone. He switched on the screen, and Jim could see that it was projecting a view of the street before the hospital. From the vantage point, it was possible to deduce that the video feed came from a camera that was hidden on the standing corpse.

 

“Stop there.”

 

The small John on the screen stopped. “Sherlock?”

  
  
“Okay,” Sherlock intoned with a sigh misting in his throat. “Look up. I’m on the rooftop.”

 

John looked up, and a look of horror, disbelief, and desperation pools across his face like dawn across water. “Oh _God_.”

 

“I … I … I can’t come down, so, we’ll … we’ll just have to do this like this.”

 

The unease spilled more into John’s voice. “ _What’s going on_?”

 

“An apology,” Sherlock explained, “It’s all true.”

 

“Wh-what?”

 

“Everything they said about me. I _invented_ Moriarty.” To an extent this was true, both Sherlock and Jim thought. They wouldn’t be themselves if it weren’t for each other. Jim’s puzzles had honed Sherlock, shaping him into the detective he was today, and Sherlock’s relentless drive had been Jim’s motivation to continue doing what he did, drawing this like-minded individual towards him, leaving bloody breadcrumbs behind him to lure someone into the forest, to reassure him that he wasn’t alone. Jim and Sherlock looked at one another, silent, neither of them smiling.

 

If it weren’t for the fact that Sherlock’s hands both held a phone, Jim might have dared to reach out for one. An acknowledgement that they weren’t alone, no; they had one another. This thought created a terrifying alternative to coexistence. _Without you, I’m nothing._ Although it was only a few moments before when Jim had seriously considered this alternative, now it seemed like a foolish idea, and he daren’t think about it again.

 

“Why are you saying this?”

 

“I’m a fake.” Which wasn’t exactly entirely false, Sherlock thought. At least the “Sherlock” that John was looking at was a fake.

 

“Sherlock …” John’s voice teemed with a rejection of that idea.

 

Sherlock gathered himself, and tried to burden his voice with tears. Like his life depended on it, only ironically, his death really depended on it. “The newspapers were right all along,” he made a crocodile confession. “I want you to tell Lestrade; I want you to tell Mrs. Hudson, and Molly … in fact, tell anyone who will listen to you that I created Moriarty for my own purposes.”

 

John was shaking with disbelief. “Okay, shut up, Sherlock, shut up.” Jim wondered if John was the only person who could say that to Sherlock. But of course, it never worked. “The first time we met …” John desperately recalled, “The _first day we met_ , you knew all about my sister, right?

 

“Nobody could be that clever.”

 

“You could.” For once, Jim agreed with John.

 

Sherlock laughed, and the resignation sounded real. “I researched you. Before we met, I discovered everything that I could to impress you.” He threw in a couple delicate, melancholic sniffs. “It’s a trick,” he stated, “ _Just a magic trick_.”

 

“No.” John denied. “All right, stop it now.” The world isn’t going to stop for you.

 

John began moving away from his predestined spot, and the nervousness in Sherlock’s voice was real. “No, stay _exactly_ where you are. Don’t move.”

 

John gave in. “All right.”

 

Sherlock elevated his pulse, quickened his breathing, and shallowly breathed out his words. “Keep your eyes fixed on me,” he pleaded, “Please, will you do this for me?”

 

“Do what?” John asked, still refusing and scared to accept what he knew, or rather, thought, was going on.

 

“This phone call, it’s er … my note. It’s what people do, don’t they? Leave a note?” _And die_ , Jim finished his thought. He couldn’t believe that this is happening. It makes him feel giddy, conspiratorial, stimulated. The desire to laugh tickled up his spine again, and he slipped up, let out a quiet giggle. Forgot the phone was on speaker mode. Sherlock turned to him and shushed him quietly, but with force. Jim bit his bottom lip.

 

John shook his head violently, trying to shake away the truth (or in his case, perceived truth) of what’s happening. But it sticks like static energy. “Leave a note when?” He asks a shaky question that he already knows the answer to.

 

“Goodbye, John.”

 

“No, _don’t_.” But Sherlock does anyway. He let go of one of the strings, and the corpse dropped its phone to the ground. The phone is still screaming. “No, _SHERLOCK_!”

 

Sherlock let go of all the strings, and watched the corpse fall to its (continued) death from the roof of St. Bart’s Hospital. A smile spread across his face when he realised that this was it. He was free.

 

Free from ordinary life and its restrictions, free from expectations and obligations, morality and regulations. Free from the effort of being alive, with a name, a persona, a past, connections. He felt so light, so ecstatic, so unapologetic. He never expected death to feel so good.

 

Jim was laughing beside him, delighted at the clever ploy Sherlock had engineered for himself. Some parts of it were too precarious and dicey for Jim, but it had worked, and Sherlock was always one who liked the idea of risk. It had worked out splendidly, and Jim found himself looking forward to planning his own “official” death with Sherlock.

 

They look at each other and continue to giggle, although not too loudly, so as not to alert anyone of their presence. But as the excitement begins to fizz away and the reality of being truly alone but alone together dawns upon them, the dratted question popped back into their atmosphere.

 

_What now?_

 

The obvious answer was to move forward. So, that’s the direction Jim leaned towards.

 

When Sherlock met him, it was all rather clumsy and not very well thought out. In retrospect, it seemed rather obviously so, as the two of them had not previously bothered with romantic endeavors, at it seemed all too time-consuming and nonsensical. Besides, the idea of liking another human being well enough to share bodily fluids rather baffled the two of them.

 

Sherlock tilted his head more and slowly parted his lips. He felt Jim do the same, and it was a bit weird, since he didn’t usually experience things without his sense of vision - unless he was high, but even so, only occasionally - but he knew, from television, that your eyes were meant to stay closed while you kiss someone.

 

Jim pushed back a little more forcefully, and Sherlock felt his heart stutter for a moment, as if questioning, _are you sure this is the way it goes?_ Jim’s mind asked the same question when he felt Sherlock’s fingers weave into his hair, still wet and sticky with blood. It seemed like it was inevitable, in one way or the other, for since they knew of the existence of one another, they only had eyes, hands, feet, tongues, lungs, noses, roses, minds, and mines for one another. Nothing else had mattered before, and so will not matter anymore.

 

If “made for each other” weren’t such an overused and trite expression, maybe it would have applied to the situation quite satisfactorily.

 

Slowly, with foreheads still touching, noses still bumping, lips occasionally still meeting, they broke away from one another. Sherlock’s hand disentangled from Jim’s bloody hair, and came to rest on his shoulder. Jim tried to not care too much about the blood staining his coat. It was black, anyway, he comforted himself.

 

They almost hated how they looked directly at each other’s eyes, just like how every written romance dictates, but it was almost impossible to look elsewhere. _Then let us fall into a cliché_ , Sherlock almost sneered, or at least, scoffed. The ambulance blared below them, and they couldn’t really think of anything to do, except for to do it again. So Sherlock closed his eyes and kissed Jim again.

 

Jim smiled against Sherlock’s lips and broke the kiss. “Should we, you know, maybe flee the scene?” “Mmmm,” Sherlock agreed. Seemed like a good plan. “Are you asking me to run away with you?” “Well, would you?” “ _Yes_.” Jim grinned, “Well, good, because you don’t really have a choice, sweetheart.”

 

Sherlock rose to his knees and pried open the cover of the chimney they were leaning against. Taped to the concrete were two uniforms he stole from the hospital. Even Molly didn’t know about this; he couldn’t have let on too much, since you’re not supposed to put all the eggs in the basket. He told her that he could take care of himself, and that was indeed true.

 

He also removed a St. Bart’s duffel bag from the chimney as well. “Take off your clothes-” “Darling, don’t you think it’s a bit early for that-” “Shut up, and put them in the bag.” Jim slid the gun back into his pocket, and shrugged off his coat, which he folded into the bag. Sherlock just stuffed his into it. Moving in rapid silence, they removed their clothes (Jim neatly; Sherlock not so) and put on orderlies’ scrubs. Sherlock zipped up the duffel bag whilst Jim lowered the chimney cover. “Follow me,” Sherlock gestured at the fire escape.

 

The rickety staircase would have creaked very noticeably if it weren’t for the clangor at street level, surrounding the sacrificial corpse. Jim and Sherlock rounded over the front of the hospital, blending in with the other “hospital personnel” - or rather, the part of Sherlock’s homeless network that he had assigned to work with Molly on faking his death - and slipping through the hospital door. Someone had already dragged John somewhere else.

 

Cool and smooth, the hospital floor hardly betrayed their intruding existence as Jim and Sherlock walked through its premises, anonymous under their medical masks and hospital caps. They descended down to the morgue, and exited through a discreet door that orderlies were meant to go through in order to deposit medical waste and other rubbish. Jim glanced at their surroundings, and found that the surveillance cameras were completely blacked out.

 

Sherlock continued walking until he was at the third dumpster from the door, whilst Jim stayed by the door to keep watch for any approaching persons.

 

With a heavy, scrapey groan, the manhole cover shifted away. “ _Jim_ ,” Sherlock beckoned him over, already half inside the tunnel. Jim scurried over and followed Sherlock down, and dragged the manhole cover back to its original spot.

 

They continued until the bottom, when a slightly wet thud signalled Sherlock reaching the button. Jim waited until Sherlock had stepped away before doing the same. Sherlock rummaged in his lab coat for something, and produced a flashlight. He switched it on, and directed the light down the tunnel. He motioned for Jim to follow him somewhere, through the great sewer system of London.

  
“Hopefully there’s a light at the end of _this_ tunnel,” Jim grumbled.


End file.
